unlettered people during the course of cen-
turies. But the actual historical relationship
of communal dance-songs to such narrative
lyrics as were collected by Bishop Percy,
Ritson and Child is still under debate. ¹

"All poetry," said Professor Gummere in
reply to a critic of his theory of communal
composition of ballads, "springs from the
same poetic impulse, and is due to individuals;
but the conditions under which it is made,
whether originally composed in a singing,
dancing throng and submitted to oral tradi-
tion, or set down on paper by the solitary and
deliberate poet, have given birth to that dis-
tinction of 'popular' and 'artistic,' or what-
ever the terms may be, which has obtained in
some form with nearly all writers on poetry
since Aristotle." Avoiding questions that
are still in controversy, let us look at some of
the indubitable characteristics of the "popu-
lar" ballads as they are shown in Child's col-
lection. ² They are impersonal. There is

-278-